What's best way to copy a filesystem? [was: Re: slight emergency here...]

[Derek Ragona]

At 08:45 PM 10/28/2007, Gary Kline wrote:
>On Sun, Oct 28, 2007 at 06:34:22PM -0500, Jon Hamilton wrote:
> > Gary Kline <kline at tao.thought.org>, said on Sun Oct 28, 2007 [03:02:03 PM]:
> >
> > } >   At any rate, how do i as root, single user, cp -rp all of /var to
> > } >   elsewhere (/storage) and rmdir /var, them mkdir /var and copy
> > } >   everything back?? I've forgotten the cpio magic command.
> > } >
> > }     The nutshelll of this posting could be: What's the best tool
> > }     to copy a /FILESYSTEM to /storage/FILESYSTEM?
> >
> > The best tool is the one you use successfully.  If you're really 
> talking about
> > a whole filesystem, dump and restore may contain the least surprises in
> > unusual situations:
> >
> > $ newfs /dev/whatever
> > $ mount /dev/whatever /mnt
> > $ cd /dev/whatever
> > $ dump 0af - /old_filesystem | restore -rf -
> >
> > Then delete /mnt/restoresymtable when it's all done.
> >
> > Of course you can use tar, cpio, cpdup if you have it, or even cp.  At
> > different points in time historically some of those have had problems with
> > some situations like sparse files, "extra" hard links, symlinks, etc.
> >
>
>
>         Seems like I'm running into inode problems.... I finally
>         tar'd  /var to a /temp fs, then forgot to do the newfs.  So now
>         I've got a fs panic.
>
>         Hope it isn't a bad drive.....
>
>         thanks.
>
>         gary

I would run the manufacturer's diagnostics on the drive to be sure.  Often 
drives will have a media issue SMART doesn't catch.

         -Derek

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